Juliana lifted her chin. “I return to my theory that Mr. Stacy would find it more expedient to go back into hiding. And I was right.”
“But you might not have been right, love. McGregor insists it was a poacher with a stray shot. It wasn’t. No poacher around here uses bullets like this.” He reached into his sporran and dropped a bit of metal onto the table. “This is a cartridge for a custom rifle, like mine, not a common shotgun.”
Most bullet casings looked alike to Juliana, but she nodded at it. “Yes?”
“Your lackeys surrounded me and bade me come back with them like a pack of nursemaids.”
“I can’t help what they thought,” Juliana said, still studying the shell casing. “And I’m sorry. But I would rather see you walk home, angry at me, than be carried home on a litter, hurt, maybe dead.”
Elliot’s silence made her raise her head. He wore a bleak expression, his anger winding down into weariness. “Ye don’t believe me, do ye, lass? Ye think your husband’s a madman, like they do. McPherson is ready to throw me into a padded room.”
“No, I…”
His lips tightened. “Don’t pretend, Juliana.”
“I’m not pretending. I believe you. Now you need to believe me.”
Elliot stopped, his expression still grim.
“’Twas not an easy decision,” Juliana said. “You may believe me on that point too. But I weighed all the possibilities against what I had observed myself and drew the conclusion that you are not mad. Not about this anyway.”
His eyes glinted. “Did you make a list?”
“In my head. Yes, I did.”
“Not about this anyway?” he repeated.
“You know perfectly well what I mean. Whenever you talk to me of Mr. Stacy, you sound quite sane. Did he really shoot Mr. Dalrymple?”
“In the hand. It was a magnificent shot.” Elliot reached into his pocket. “But I think he was anxious to get rid of this.”
He dropped a piece of paper onto the table. The paper was damp, the ink blurred and illegible.
“What is that?”
“Death certificate. Dalrymple claims it is. It has to be a forgery, but it’s hard to tell now.”
Juliana touched it. “Mr. Dalrymple had this?”
“Mr. Dalrymple is a petty blackmailer. He wants money out of me to keep quiet that I killed Stacy. He’s gambling on me being so insane I don’t remember anything I do.”
“Well, it’s nonsense. Mr. Stacy is alive and here. I saw him.”
“What?”
“In the garden.” Juliana told him of the encounter, and her conclusion that the man had been in India.
“Damn it.”
“You can’t be everyplace at once,” Juliana said. “Besides, he did nothing. He looked at Priti, then looked at me, then ran off when I called him by name.”
“Damn it to hell,” Elliot said feelingly. He added a few more expletives that gentlemen should never use in front of ladies, and segued into languages she didn’t know.
“He did nothing. He looked at me most peculiarly, and at Priti, but did and said nothing.”
“Son of a…” More expletives. Elliot came to her. “Don’t go near him. Don’t leave the house. Give up your soiree until I’ve found him.”
“Midsummer’s Eve fête and ball,” Juliana corrected. “Which is next week. And no, I won’t give it up.”
“Until I’ve found him, I said.”
“Elliot,” Juliana said with patience, though his warmth close to her was most distracting. “The supplies are arriving. The house—at least the public spaces—will be ready. The invitations have been sent and replies received. The villagers are excited about the fête. I cannot possibly cancel everything now.”
“Postpone, I meant,” Elliot said, his jaw tight.
“It amounts to the same thing. I have only just now finished sending out all the letters to my wedding guests, explaining my change of circumstance and apologizing for saying I’d marry one man and marrying a different one on the same day. Therefore I refuse to let one mad Scotsman—I refer to Mr. Stacy, not you—make me send out more letters explaining that, I’m very sorry, but the first event I am hostessing at my new home must be postponed. I will not do it. I will not let Mr. Stacy force me to do it. I will not let you force me to do it.”
“Dear God, are you telling me that a bloody fête is more important than a sharpshooter hiding out in the woods?”
Juliana opened her eyes wide. “Yes. It is quite the most important point in our lives. If we let gentlemen like Mr. Stacy—and, I might add, Mr. Dalrymple—prevent us from carrying out events crucial to us and our marriage, then where would we be?”
Chapter 22
How do you wrap me around your finger, Juliana McBride? Her eyes sparkled with resolve and stubbornness, her lips quivering from her stout declaration.
I love you with every breath I draw.
Elliot caressed her cheek then leaned down and kissed the soft lips he’d been longing to taste all day.
“Then I’ll just have to find him first,” he said, his lips a breath from hers. “Don’t send half the village after me this time.”
Her stubbornness dissolved to worry, and that worry touched his heart. “Be careful.”
“Always, love.” He kissed her again, then released her with reluctance to retrieve his rifle.
Juliana believed him. Elliot’s heart sang it as he left the room—finding the entire household, including the dog, gathered in the passage outside the dining room. They collectively tried to pretend they were doing something else when he emerged, but Elliot strode past them, unseeing.
She believed him. The rest of the world thought Elliot irretrievably mad, but Juliana had decided to trust his word.
She’d just given him the most beautiful gift he’d ever received.
The day of the midsummer fête dawned promisingly enough. The weather was calm, the sky arched blue overhead, and only a few white clouds drifted over the highest hills.
Juliana gave the fine weather the merest glance, relieved the rain had stopped. Rains had swept over the house two nights running, as had high winds and wild lightning. Hamish had been convinced he’d seen a ghost again and refused to leave the kitchen, despite all Juliana’s efforts.
And Elliot had hunted Mr. Stacy. Elliot had gone out walking the hills, even in the bad weather, but he’d never found trace of his prey. Either Mr. Stacy had gone to ground, or he’d left the area entirely.
Juliana knew—and she knew Elliot did too—that Mr. Stacy wouldn’t simply leave. He’d come for a reason, and while that reason was not yet clear, if Mr. Stacy were anything like Elliot, he’d stick to his purpose.
The fact that the house began filling up with guests also might have triggered Stacy’s absence. First to arrive was Sinclair McBride and his two children, Andrew and Caitriona. Six-year-old Andrew took at once to Priti and her goat, while Caitriona, a dignified eight, preferred to sit in the drawing room and look at Juliana’s ladies’ magazines.
They were lonely children, Juliana sensed, though she soon learned why Sinclair called them ungovernable terrors. The day they arrived, Andrew managed to lure the goat upstairs and hide it in the tiny room Komal occupied. The shrieks and scolding went on for hours, the goat, bleating wildly, happy to escape. During all this Caitriona sat calmly in the drawing room, holding her large golden-haired doll, and quietly turned the pages of the magazine, uninterested in the entire affair—uninterested in everything.